News
Monmouth Beach Approves Bond Ordinance For Road Projects, Beach Lockers
By Sherry Conohan
MONMOUTH BEACH - The Borough Commission has passed a $1,750,000 bonding ordinance, which will finance the unanticipated construction of second floor lockers for the Monmouth Beach Bathing Pavilion as well as road projects.
The ordinance was intended primarily to pay for the 2010 road program, which covers 13 street projects costing $1,176,000. But it was expanded to include $450,000 for building new second floor lockers at the pavilion to replace the deteriorated lockers, which had to be demolished as part of extensive renovations underway at the aging municipal beach club.
The measure, approved at a special meeting of the commission on Monday, Nov. 23, authorizes the issuance of $1,665,000 in bonds or notes.
Mayor Sue Howard said construction of the second floor lockers would never be bonded. She said the money borrowed would be paid off with $150,000 from bathing pavilion revenues beginning in 2011 and in each of the next two years.
The debt for the pavilion second floor lockers would be totally paid off in 2013, she continued. In that year, she noted, all three commissioners would be completing their current terms and would have to stand for re-election.
The Borough Commission started out two years ago on a pay-as-you-go program to upgrade and rehabilitate the pavilion, using beach fees charged for membership in the pavilion to pay the bills. This was after a proposal on the ballot to bond to do the total rehabilitation of the pavilion all at once was rejected by the voters at the polls.
A contract was awarded this year for the reconstruction of the first floor lockers, but a pre-construction inspection found the pilings were rotted below and the second floor locker area was too deteriorated to allow it to stand. So it was demolished to permit reconstruction of the first floor lockers to proceed.
Money for the second floor had not been incorporated into this year's budget, so the job was included in the ordinance for bonds and notes.
Michael Trotta, chairman of a citizens pavilion advisory committee, said at the public hearing before the ordinance was adopted that the committee had voted 22-0 with one abstention to approve the emergency construction and the proposed method of financing for it. He had stressed earlier that "No tax dollars will be used in this at all," referring to the second floor locker construction.
Asked in the public portion of the meeting about damage from tropical storm Ida when the nor'easter battered the shore last month, Howard said the borough lost the railing for the stairs over the seawall on the south side of the pavilion but the stairs were still there. She said some of the sand from the dredging of the river that has been pumped over the seawall to the beach, beginning just before the storm, was lost but that the pumping was proceeding.
Howard noted that $1.9 million in federal funds had been appropriated for beach replenishment in Monmouth Beach and Long Branch, but said that was not going to be nearly enough with all the erosion from the Ida storm.
"We're going to have to ask for more," she said. "We obviously don't have enough. We need to keep pushing.
Commissioner James F. Cunniff said the sand is still there.
"It's just offshore," he said. "It always comes back."
